English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 3, 2020, pp. 254-262 254 Utilizing learner language to craft well–targeted endorsements in English language teaching practices Nasrullah a,1,*, Elsa Rosalina b,2, Eka Puteri Elyani c,3 a, b, c Lambung Mangkurat University, Jl. Brigjen H. Hasan Basri, Kayu Tangi, Banjarmasin, Kalimantan Selatan, Indonesia 70123 1 [email protected] *; 2 [email protected] ; 3 [email protected] * corresponding author ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Learning a foreign language for those who have their first and second Article history language often puts learners in imperfection mastery such as irrelevant Received 11 June 2020 lexical choice, and source cultural bounds language utterances. Revised 14 December 2020 Knowing the concepts merely cannot guarantee the process of avoiding Accepted 22 December 2020 mistakes or errors that learners have. There has been an amount of research on learner language which focuses on language corpus but little on highlighting the research specific language components Keywords grammatically contributing to language learners’ competence. Banjar Kuala Therefore, to fill the void, this study aimed at scrutinizing and yielding Banjar Hulu information on the practical way of phenomena in Indonesians’ pre-service English teachers interference by knowing the students’ feature descriptions of language English language practices competence. In this research, a guided interview was used to sub-ethnic learner language of Banjarese which covered several Banjar Kuala and Banjar Hulu pre- service English teachers in getting the data of this study. The findings reveal language problems in lexical aspect, semantic confusion, incorrect use of word-formation pattern, prepositional misuse, and problems in language syntax and discourse. The implication of this study calls for recommendations to adopt techniques in mitigating suggested learner language in the area of subject-verb concord, tenses, and lexical problems in a process of language development This is an open access article under the CC–BY-SA license. 1. Introduction The phenomena of learning English as a foreign language have been spread over the world. Slow and fast, success and failure in learning the language become ‘pieces of stuff’ that depict teaching and learning achievement in an academic setting. In Indonesia, the learning of English has been started since students in the secondary level, yet the attainable mastery of the language performance in the level of either written or, in particular, spoken does not reflect the duration of learning the language. Hence, there is a belief the system of immediate education is not as successful as expected in teaching English (Tosun, 2012). A number of academic papers have supported this notion (Aktas, 2005; Bayraktaroglu, 2012; Enginarlar, 2003; Darancık, 2008; Gunes, 2011; Hamamcı, 2013). Therefore, in learning English, there is a space to reflect on whatever ways in which how learners learned the language to ensure the learning quality process in terms of aspects in language that have been completely learned and acquired from every developmental stage. In order words, by paying the attention to the pace of learners’ learning, the opportunities to witness and nurture their language development can be addressed appropriately. 10.12928/eltej.v3i3.2277 http://journal2.uad.ac.id/index.php/eltej/index [email protected] ISSN 2621-6485 English Language Teaching Educational Journal 255 Vol. 3, No. 3, 2020, pp. 254-262 The discussion on how learners learned will be closely related to historical based knowledge on the concept of contrastive analysis (CA), error analysis (EA), and Interlanguage (IL) since they had been major areas of inquiry in second language acquisition (SLA) research studies (He, 2019). He highlighted that contrastive analysis became a paradigm in foreign language learning during 1950s and 1960s. The concept of contrastive analysis (CA) was first developed by Charles Fries in 1945 as an integral component of the methodology of FL teaching. It CA, it was noted that in learning an FL, the learner tended to bring with him the knowledge of the L1, and suggested that this should be taken into consideration in teaching the L2 (Al-khresheh, 2016). Such descriptive comparison serves to show how languages differ in their sound system, grammatical structure, and vocabulary. However, contrastive linguists had made over claims or high expectations from the teacher. In fact, a few parts of the learning problems can be predicted. Many problems are of the native language. The main problem is that language learning cannot be comprehended by a purely linguistic study; those who were concerned with language learning shift their attention to the new disciplines of error analysis, performance analysis, or interlanguage studies. Likewise, the contrastive analysis was denied by many as an applied discipline. Since its inception in 1970s, Agbay& Reyes (2019) uttered that error analysis had been a subject of interest of many scholars in the past in identifying, classifying, and systematically interpreting flaw forms done by learners based on linguistics perspective. Moreover, it pictures out what problems occurred, through a systematic study or learners’ error not just to identify learning problem but also to open the mind of language learner (Johanssen, 2008). It is not merely a matter of revealing the surface position of where the spots of language deficiency are, but also heed the focus to correct version and something that underwrites to learner’s progress in target language mastery. In order words, the heart of instruction has been a shift from the teaching of second language acquisition whose main concern is language teacher to analyzing the learner language in the classroom (Tarone & Swierzbin, 2009). In the following phase, problems were also found EA. The study of errors is not sufficient to recognize learners’ difficulties rather the entire learners’ performance was very crucial to be the object of study, whether as it talks about errors and non-errors, through performance analysis. Then, the next phase of development was interlanguage studies (ILS). It was the study of learner language as a system to show the gradual development towards the target language. The central attention is on the learning process as a comparison with first language acquisition. Özkayran & Yılmaz, (2020) explained that there are two types of error categories, namely, intralingual and interlingual. While the former is perceived by learners who feel that second language patterns are similar to first language forms, the latter is an incomplete application of rules of second language learned. As the part of interlanguage study, Rustipa (2011) added that interlanguage is resulted from L1 transfer, strategies of second language training (e.g simplification), and overgeneralization of second language forms. Morover, Lasaten (2014) categorized errors in taxonomy comprising of (a) grammatical (prepositions, articles, reported speech, singular/plural, adjectives, relative clauses, infinitives, verbs and tenses, and possessive case); (b) syntactic (coordination and conjunctions, sentence structure, nouns and pronouns, and word order, fragment and run on); (c) lexical (word choice); (d) semantic (literal translation); and (e) substance/mechanics (punctuation, capitalization, and spelling). Previous studies have been conducted on EA and interlanguage. Several of them such as Turkish EFL learners’ linguistics and lexical errors by Ozkan Kirmizi and Birten Karci in (2017), and the Nitty-gritty of Language Learners’ Errors conducted by Bandar Mohammad Saeed Al-Sobhi in 2019, and contrastive analysis study of interlanguage errors by Gibriel in 2020. The first study reported that the most causes errors made is L1 interference while the second study examines the errors caused by negative language transfer and why such errors occur. The third study elaborated theoretical review on CA, EA, and IL. Even a bulk of previously mentioned studies have been elaborated, however, a little research is conducted in the Indonesian context particularly in interlanguage perspective. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to find out a linguistic analysis on interlingual process done by Indonesian pre-service English teachers and formulate recommendations as its contribution for language teaching practices. Nasrullah et.al (Utilizing learner language to craft well –targeted endorsements) 256 English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 3, 2020, pp. 254-262 2. Research Method This study employed a qualitative method. The research subjects were the pre-service English teachers recruited from students of English department academic year 2017- 2018. The total number of subjects was 108 students in which there were 83 students categorized as Banjar people speaking Banjarese in their daily lives. From the total number of Banjar people, 70 was specified as Banjar Kuala while 13 students were classified as Banjar Hulu. The techniques in collecting data used by researchers were elicitation and documentation. The former technique was to get the information about learner language through interview which then to be transcribed into written form to see erroneous sentences of spoken way. The latter one was to scrutinize grammatical error which might occur obtained from written one. Both ways were applied to get a better picture in error analysis framework toward the students’ performance to